Elemental View (password: headlands) is a work for The Long String Instrument, retuned steel guitar and santur, performed by Ellen Fullman with The Living Earth Show commissioned by the Gerbode Foundation Special Awards in the Arts program. It was conceived of as a film, shot on location at the Headlands Center for the Arts in the Marin Headlands during the pandemic when live performance was shut down. I took this opportunity to realize a life-time vision of orchestrating a piece in an expanded installation of 134 strings.
Elemental View is a celebration of beauty in nature; namely, the physics of string vibration. In playing The Long String Instrument, strings are bowed lengthwise, setting up the longitudinal mode of vibration. Harmonics sound out as the performer plays, moving along the string length. This piece draws from extended harmonies that are embedded in the complex sound my instrument produces. Melodic, rhythmic and percussive parts focus the fluid and slowly unfolding harmonies, to ornament and amplify naturally occurring overtone events. The Living Earth Show (Andrew Meyerson and Travis Andrews) perform rhythmic textures, striking groupings of strings tuned to chords using tools I designed and built called the ‘box bow’ and ‘shoveler’. The duo also plays a sequence of movements on steel guitar and santur that bridge song form with experimentalism, generated from ephemeral melodic phrases which emanate from the harmonics. With Elemental View I wish to foster a slow, close attention to the beauty of the natural world and the optimism it can bring.
